


délivre-moi

by spacestationtrustfund



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: CW for canon-typical abuse/manipulation/torture/emotions, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-23
Updated: 2015-07-23
Packaged: 2018-04-10 20:57:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4407398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacestationtrustfund/pseuds/spacestationtrustfund
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s diving into uncharted waters, and for once he doesn’t have the fear of drowning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	délivre-moi

_Blessed be the boys time can’t capture_  
On film or between the sheets  
I always fall from your window to the pitch-black streets  
And with the black banners raised  
As the crooked smiles fade  
Former heroes who quit too late  
Who just wanna fill up the trophy case again  
And in the end  
I’d do it all again  
I think you’re my best friend

_~_

_And I still feel that rush in my veins_

_It twists my head just a bit to think_

_All those people in those old photographs I’ve seen are dead_

 

(Fall Out Boy, “The Kids Aren’t All Right”)

 

 

Memories are difficult things to deal with; they demand too much and leave so little in return that their presence seems stifling, covering, intangibly oppressive. He remembers little that he wants to remember, but a certain surplus of other torments.

He remembers fire coursing over a bridge, engulfing him as he leaps desperately across, and how ironic it is that for him, it’s always bridges and pain tied so closely together. He remembers gunshots, flames exploding in the background as they half-ran, half-carried each other through the sparks that fell like rain. He remembers the empty, dead eyes of the soldiers he fought alongside, corpses tossed aside on the field somewhere in Italy. He remembers a day where it always seems to be raining in his memories, bullets peppering the dirt next to him as he ran blindly through the smoke. He remembers the icy chill of the Alps, snow whirling in the air, and the rush of wind in his face as he looks down on a train puffing smoke to the crisp winter sky. He remembers the cold sting of metal against his flesh and the wind whipping his hair, clinging to the side of the train car, watching a dark blur growing smaller as it fell. He remembers soft hands on his, whispered condolences, while the empty tang of liquor tasted sour in his mouth. He remembers remembering, a lifetime of remembering, and he doesn’t know when he began to forget.

“It’s my fault,” he tells Natasha one day, in the middle of lunch. She’s been taking him to all of her favourite restaurants, to show him how things are in the modern world, piece by piece. He doesn’t like it, but Natasha is a gracious teacher, and she understands well.

Natasha bites down on her lip and raises her eyes to meet his, a dangerous look of disapproval hidden in them. “Rogers, don’t be an idiot.”

He talked to Peggy about it, but it was never something he could truly convey, never something that he could find the right words to explain: _I killed my best friend_. How can he say that to anyone? How can he say it to himself?

“It wasn’t your fault,” Peggy tries to console him, her crisp accent melting into gentleness and all of her hard corners softening around the edges. There’s a bottle of liquor in front of him, but the only way he can get drunk is to keep reliving the moments again and again. He’s exhausted and beaten and all he can think is _Bucky_ , and all he can hope is that there’s a set limit to the people he loves who will be killed as a result of his actions. Peggy doesn’t leave him, and that’s when he starts to wonder if she’s lost someone before the same way he has now.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Natasha tells him nearly three quarters of a century later, when he’s finally admitted to her what happened that one winter day on a train in the mountains. She’s different from Peggy, in many ways, but in the moment of her acceptance the two women could be the same. Natasha’s leaning forwards slightly, something fiercely absolving in her eyes, and he knows that Peggy would have gotten along with Natasha extremely well. “Steve, listen to me. It wasn’t your fault.”

Learning new things is confusing, and it takes time, more time than he would like. It’s frustrating, not to be able to know what’s going on. It’s a feeling he’s familiar with, but it makes him think of when he was growing up in Brooklyn, shy and stupid and scared out of his mind. Steve doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to tell anyone exactly what happened, because everyone who was there— _it hurts to think about, how many people he’ll never see again_ —are dead.

The first time he sees Tony he’s confused, because everyone keeps saying he’s been trapped in the ice for seventy years, but from a distance he thinks he sees Howard Stark again. And if Stark’s lived this long, wouldn’t it be possible for Peggy— _he won’t let himself think about Bucky, not yet_ —to have lived too? But then the man turns, and although the resemblance is striking, it’s not Howard but his son. Steve tries not to think about how disappointed he is, but something breaks in him when he realises who it is.

He’s always been bad at talking to people, so it’s a wonderful relief when he meets Natasha, sometime after Nick Fury found him lost and terrified on the streets on a city that looked nothing like it had seventy years ago. She’s a woman he can talk to, she’s a _person_ he can talk to, and that’s something he hasn’t experienced in so long. Fighting alongside Natasha has the same sort of sickening thrill that fighting in the war had on him, an almost relieving loss of dread and rush of adrenaline that makes everything crystal clear and sharp but also hazy and blurred at the same time.

In the car ride with Peggy, for the first time, when he’s trying to talk to her and failing miserably, Steve thinks about how easy it is to talk to Bucky, yet somehow he can never talk to women. And maybe it’s different with girls, but he knows that Bucky, for one, has no problem with flirting, so maybe Steve is the problem instead of what he says. Peggy sums it up pretty well when she laughs and says, not unkindly, “You really are bad at talking to women, aren’t you?”

Or something along the lines of that; it’s been so long since then that he can’t remember exactly. “I think this is the longest conversation I’ve had with one,” Steve admits, thinking about Bucky again. Sometimes they went on double dates, which usually ended in Bucky necking with whatever girl he wanted to neck with, and Steve and the other girl sitting awkwardly in the corner. Girls would never give Steve a second glance, not while Bucky was around.

Steve could understand how they felt. He would have done exactly the same thing, were he in their place, although he knew he would never have the opportunity.

He can’t stop thinking about all the dead men he’s seen, blood soaking through makeshift bandages, blank eyes staring up at the grey sky, clothes and skin filthy with dirt and mud and blood and the familiar red stains covering everything. He’s lived too long, gone through hell in that war, and watched the soldiers he laughed and joked around with one day lying slaughtered on the fields the next. Tony laughs and calls him old man, but the reality of it comes crashing back down on him when he’s huddled against the wall, futilely fighting back all his terrible memories, reliving each explosion, each death, each scream, each human being he was unable to save.

It’s at these times when he allows himself to think of the icy chill of winter wind on the top of a snow-covered mountain, his hands gripping the side of the train, cold metal on flesh, snow and tears stinging his eyes. It’s at these times when he allows himself to tally up a rough estimate of all the deaths he’s prevented, and to hold them against those whose deaths will stay with him forever— _Dr Erskine, Peggy, Bucky_ —and at those times he can see that in his mind at least he will never be able to redeem himself.

The memories are particularly relentless sometimes, when he’s with the rest of them, and they’re trying to act as a team, talking and laughing, and he has to remind himself not to get attached. Maybe it’s a lifetime of being beat up in back alleyways, maybe it’s the war and all its bloody repercussions, maybe it’s another side effect of the goddamn serum—whatever it is, he’s learned to harden himself against other people. If there’s one thing the whole mess taught him, it’s that forming connections will never pay off, not when the connections are broken every time.

Maybe it’s a side effect—he’s considered that possibility thoroughly: Since that day when everything changed, when the serum amplified every bit of pain he was able to feel, he’s considered hundreds, thousands of possibilities. All he wanted then was to help to win the war so that the fighting would be over— _it wasn’t that easy, was it?_ —and no one would have to be hurt any more.

Even then he knew it would never work out so perfectly, but he kept hoping—wasn’t that the reason he was chosen in the first place? The inexhaustible ability to hope, it’s always been both a blessing and a curse to him, he knows that well enough: It’s what drove him to keep fighting and drove him to rescue those prisoners and drove him to go on each mission they told him to go on. And when he’s alone and he has the self-loathing to rethink those choices all those years ago, and that one moment he can’t decide if he supports or regrets— _I gotta put her in the water_ —knowing he’ll never see any of them again, and doing it anyway.

No one knows what he’s been through, and he doesn’t say that to chastise but to remind himself of the simple facts: Natasha has come the closest to understanding; he knows she’s had to suffer as well, they all have, but it’s different for them. Their losses were the faults of others, whereas his were all his own— _he could have chosen not to enlist, chosen to let someone else take his place as the test subject, chosen not to bring Bucky on the train, chosen to allow other men to go after Schmidt, chosen to land the craft in some other way_ —and the consequences are his to bear as a result of it.

Of course, he can’t stop thinking of all the dead men he’s seen, and about how many of those deaths were his fault, and how many he could have prevented; how many deaths he’s caused by his very existence. And the hardest thing about accepting that fact is that it means there’s no way to turn back the clock, no way to go back and to change everything, no way to bring anyone back. For all his abilities, all his strength and power and skill, the one thing he wants so desperately to do is impossible for him to accomplish, and that’s what hurts the most.

He gets a new team, and they call themselves the Avengers. Steve isn’t sure exactly what they’re supposed to be avenging, but he doesn’t think anyone else does either. He feels hopelessly out of place with the high-tech weapons and higher-tech people, and he’s grateful that Natasha is also there, because she’s familiar.

When he first sees Thor, he’s confused, because Natasha calls him a god, and Steve is fairly certain that God doesn’t wear a cloak or carry a hammer. Everything is explained later, and he understands that Thor is from some other place, a different religion, which helps a little. He read some Norse mythology as a kid, so he understands most of that, although Thor doesn’t look as frightening as he’s imagined him.

Bruce confuses him, because he appears so unassuming, a simple scientist who happens to be a genius. Sometimes it seems as if everyone else who works with SHIELD is a genius. When he sees Bruce transform, he understands somewhat. He knows what it’s like to have a monster hidden inside of him, although his is smaller and decidedly less green.

He never gets along well with Tony, although he isn’t the only one. Tony never takes anything seriously, and he continuously berates Steve for being “uptight,” as he calls it. “Have some fun, live a little,” Tony coaxes him. Steve decides that Tony is a suitable replacement for Howard. He shares his father’s passion for inventions, although his do tend to fly, and when they don’t, the consequences tend to be much worse.

Clint is confusing, because he doesn’t take anything seriously either, although he and Tony are near polar opposites. At first Steve doesn’t understand why Clint is spoken of so highly, but after he watches him hit the centre of a target with one of his arrows, blindfolded and from thirty yards away, he respects the archer much more.

When he and Natasha are told that they’ve been given an assignment to rescue prisoners from a ship controlled by “hostile forces” (as Natasha jokingly puts it later, once they’re trying to come up with a way to make the whole mess sound professional), it’s a relief, because he doesn’t think he’ll be able to do many things without her. She’s his link to himself, a sort of replacement Bucky, although he doesn’t think Bucky would stand a chance against her. Not many people could take Natasha in a fight.

“You’re the toughest woman I’ve known in seventy years,” he tells her sometime after the Battle of New York, after watching her and Clint Barton sparring in the practice room. Clint is lying on the mat, looking up at them both with a cocky grin on his face, although Natasha has just flipped him over her shoulder and thrown him with a painful movement onto the floor.

Natasha blows her bright hair out of her face and looks back at Steve, smiling slightly. Nowadays, only Steve and Clint can draw smiles out of her, and Steve can’t help but to worry about that fact sometimes. “I’ll assume that’s a complement, Rogers. And thank you, but I know. I’m the best.”

“Not to mention that you’re extremely humble,” Clint mumbles into the floor, and Natasha flips backwards and lands on top of him, pinning him to the mat again, laughing and looking up at Steve with a wickedly playful expression on her face. He smiles back at her, and she winks before turning back to Clint and wrestling him into a headlock.

“Can I ask you a question?” Steve asks Clint later, while Natasha is putting away the various weapons she’s theoretically used to disarm and disembowel the two of them.

Natasha is far enough away that it’s clear she can’t hear either of them. Clint stops and looks at him, wiping sweat from his face and raising one eyebrow questioningly. “Yeah, fire away.”

Steve hesitates; he doesn’t know how this is going to come across, but he decides to ask it anyway. Apparently it isn’t forbidden to talk about things like this, not any more. “Are you and Natasha . . . together?”

Clint laughs and slings the bow he’s been using to practice over his shoulder. “Yeah. Took you long enough to figure it out. Stark’s still refusing to believe us—I can’t decide if he approves or just can’t imagine that Natasha has feelings. Well, you know how she’s like, you spend enough time with her,” Clint adds, but it isn’t a threat or a warning, merely an observation. Steve decides to go ahead and like Clint, even if it’s difficult to keep up with him sometimes.

 

***

 

Once he and watches Fury gunned down by the mysterious Winter Soldier, Steve makes a resolution to himself: _No more deaths_. No more people dying if he has any way to prevent it. No more of any of it. When he’s on the bridge again— _another bridge, another life, but the same people_ —he reminds himself of that resolution. This time, no one is going to die.

They move into the Tower together after a while, at Tony’s request. “Mi Tower es su Tower,” he says jovially, although Steve notices how his gaze lingers on Bucky’s metal arm for a bit too long to be normal. He thinks of what Bucky told him, what Natasha told him, about how the Winter Soldier was responsible for the deaths of Howard and Maria Stark.

Steve makes breakfast in the mornings and takes Bucky with him when he and Sam go running around the city. He draws pictures of everything, when he isn’t drawing pictures of nothing, and tells Bucky stories of the other era. Sometimes Bucky tells him what he remembers, and Steve is ashamed to admit that he can’t distinguish between what’s real and what’s invented.

“Are we friends?” asks Bucky one day, when they’re sitting at the table eating breakfast. He asks the question out of nowhere, and it surprises Steve enough to make him pause and think about his response. Up until now it’s been past tense: _Did we do this, was it okay, were we friends._ If the use of present tense means that Bucky’s starting to accept the present, Steve has no objections in that respect.

“Do you want us to be friends?” he says, watching the way Bucky’s eyes dart up to his for a heartbeat before settling back down in the picture of submission.

Bucky hesitates, starts to speak, then changes his mind. His hands grip the edge of the table; Steve wonders absently how awkward it’ll be if he has to explain to Tony why the table’s in splinters. “Bucky, there isn’t a wrong answer. Whatever you say is okay.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, the word slipping out barely above a whisper, the last breath of air from the lungs of a dying man, “yeah, I guess I do. Want us to be friend. That’s how it’s supposed to be, I think.”

Again with the present tense, and Steve has to force himself not to ruin everything with one wrong word or tone or infliction. Conversations with this version of Bucky are just as much minefields as the fields and slopes of the war. “Well, if that’s what you want, then we’re friends.” It’s so simple, too simple almost, to encapsulate how he feels and how he views Bucky, as so much more than just his friend, but for the moment at least it can be enough.

Bucky shifts involuntarily, shrinking away as if from a blow that will never fall. “I don’t understand,” he manages. His voice is choked and he spits out each word like a poisoned bullet he’s been told to swallow. “You keep asking me—questions—”

“I want to help you,” Steve says. It reawakens a stabbing pain in his chest to see Bucky struggling so helplessly, confused by the simplest acts of kindness. “That’s what friends do.”

“They told me—” Bucky stops, his expression one of confusion. Steve tries to imagine that it’s a good thing, that Bucky’s communicating with him at all, but the only thing he can think of is the unfathomable pain to which his best friend has been subjected. Bucky licks his lips and begins again. “They told me that I didn’t—couldn’t have— _friends._ ” The word sounds impossibly intangible in his mouth, a relic of a sacrosanct past. “I have no opinions. I have no emotions. I have no desires. I deserve nothing until compliance is achieved. I am not in possession of myself. I am the Winter Soldier.”

He’s slipped back into reciting a mantra, most likely drilled into his head through torture and agony. The thought makes Steve sick. Bucky stops talking aloud, but his mouth forms silent words. Steve doesn’t pause or hesitate this time; he forges ahead. Brave, audacious, relevant, but stupid. As always. “You’re not the Winter Soldier any more. You’re Bucky.”

“But I was,” Bucky says, his voice heartbreakingly uncertain. _Past tense,_ Steve notices, cursing himself. “Before I . . . the Winter Soldier was first.” He mumbles something unintelligible in broken Russian; Steve has the fleeting wish for Natasha’s presence. “It was, before. _Zapomnit_.”

“You were Bucky first, if you want to be specific,” Steve says, far too quickly. “You were Bucky before you were the Winter Soldier, and now you’re Bucky again.”

The palpable quality of the pain on Bucky’s face revitalises the sharp pressure in Steve’s chest with each passing second. He wants to do something to jar the memories back into place, to affix the timeline where it belongs. Bucky’s fingers are still clenched tightly on the table’s edge. “What do you want me to be,” Bucky says, making it more a statement than a question. “Tell me what you want me to be.”

Steve resists the tantalising urge to recreate the past; he suspects, no, he  _knows_ that Bucky will believe whatever memories Steve tells him are true. “I don’t want you to be anything that you don’t want to be.”

Bucky tightens his jaw stubbornly and releases the table. “I don’t know what I want to be,” he says, punctuating each word with a harder press of his fingertips against the surface of the table, leaving indents in the wood. “I’m not—allowed—”

“You’re allowed to decide who you are,” Steve says fiercely, injecting as much forcefulness into his words as he can without crossing the line and making it a direct command. “You’re allowed to know everything about yourself that you want to know.”

For a moment a fragment of the original Bucky escapes the shattered shell of the Winter Soldier. “You ain’t supposed to give me orders, Rogers.” Almost immediately the fragment of memory flits away, but it’s noticeable. It’s noticeable enough.

“The hell I’m not,” Steve says, his heart pounding wildly; “I’m a captain, sergeant. Watch how you treat your superiors.”

But then the Winter Soldier has eclipsed Bucky again, and his eyes are dark pools of emptiness. He shudders away from Steve, showing no sign of recognition, and Steve is terrified that he’s blown it, that he’s ruined everything by—referring to himself as a superior, bringing up the war and the first time Bucky was imprisoned, acting or being a certain way . . . “Bucky, it’s okay. It’s okay. It’s me.”

Bucky blinks and his eyes clear again; Steve forces himself not to collapse with relief. The entire situation seems to hinge on a barely visible balance between Bucky Barnes and the Winter Soldier. Most of the time the imaginary pendulum rests somewhere in between, but for the time being the slightest incitement in certain penetrable ways can send it staggering towards one extreme edge. And Steve is constantly, perfectly poised to tip the balance over and over with no way of knowing to which side it will fall until it does fall crashing down and all the consequences are his with which to deal. Were it anyone other than Bucky, Steve would resent his position.

“I—don’t—” Bucky says jerkily, every word a miniature battle. “I don’t remember.”

A part of Steve still hopes inexorably that Bucky will grin and roll his eyes like he used to; say  _I’m just messing with ya, Stevie_ ; smirk at him with the same smirk that the girls were all crazy about; be the person he used to be, all those decades before. It isn’t plausible, but it’s his futile hope, his impossibly wish. “You don’t have to remember everything, Bucky. It’s going to take time, and that’s okay.”

“But I don’t  _remember_ ,” Bucky repeats stubbornly, looking so frustrated that Steve wants to do something, anything, to help him. “I know bits and pieces, but—I’m not the person you think I am. I’m never going to be that person.”

“I’ll take you as I can, if it means you’re alive,” Steve says in a rush. He realises he’s been gripping his fingers together so painfully that they sting when he forces them apart. “People change. That’s okay. However you are is enough for me.”

A voice in his head which sounds a lot like Natasha warns him not to go too far, not to push it past the limit. Grudgingly, Steve agrees with her:  _Fine, Natasha. Keep it simple. Exactly the opposite of what you would have done._ He waits for Bucky to speak.

Bucky relaxes his hands and stares down at them, half-enraptured and half-loathing. His gaze flickers up to Steve, and lingers there uncertainly. “I could kill you at nearly any moment,” he says, and the matter-of-fact tone of voice is so incredibly and stereotypically Bucky that it  _hurts_ .

“I know,” Steve says honestly.

“I killed people,” Bucky says, as if it’s an urgent matter he wants to discuss. “I don’t think you  _get_ it—I killed people, Steve. I murdered them. I did all that, I did, don’t say it wasn’t me. I killed people.”

“I know.”

“I’m never going to be exactly how you remember Bu—me. I’ll only be a copy of . . . myself.”

“I know.”

Then Bucky grins suddenly and startlingly, as if the iteration has brought on a brief repercussion, and echo of the person he claims her can never truly be again. “And you still want me around, huh.”

“’Til the end of the line,” Steve reminds him, and it brings back that deep ache somewhere in his chest, how much he means every word.

 

***

 

“I killed people,” Bucky says again, when they’re in the hospital after a particularly bad mission that went south during the first five minutes and got worse from there, and Bucky is supposed to be asleep and Steve is supposed to be somewhere else. “I killed more people than I did in the war, and this was different, you know?”

He has a way of ending his sentences with _you know_ , as if he doesn’t know himself. “I did too,” Steve admits, watching Bucky out of the corner of his eye. “I killed lots of people, but I guess it’s different for you.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says quietly. “I liked it. I liked killing people, because they told me I liked it. Steve,” his voice breaks, rusty and rough from disuse, and the impossible sorrow contained in his words is painful to hear, “I don’t know who I am any more.”

“That’s okay, I think,” Steve whispers. He’s half speaking to himself, or maybe more than half. He wants to tell Bucky that he doesn’t know who he is either, that throughout the years he’s been waiting he’s become someone he never dreamed he would be, that Bucky can be whoever he wants to be as long as he’s alive. Instead, he says, “It doesn’t matter yet.”

Bucky scoffs and turns his head away, his gaze running up and down the length of his arm. “I hate this thing,” he says in a low voice, full of venom and bitterness. “I know it’s not gonna come off. But I hate it. It killed so many people who didn’t deserve it. I don’t want it attached to me any more.”

Steve nods shortly; of course he understands, of course he knows. “I guess you could try to . . . use it for good stuff, and then it couldn’t do anything bad . . . Bucky, I’m terrible at this, you gotta help me out here.”

Bucky laughs, a quick action which leaves him looking almost embarrassed. “You ain’t changed in seventy years, Rogers. Still as much of a loser as you were back then.” For a moment, something akin to fondness crosses his face, but it’s gone before Steve can identify it. He isn’t sure if he wants to identify it.

The doctors warned him that Bucky would have a hard time explaining his emotions after so long being told what he felt and wanted, and Steve doesn’t want to push him too far. “Yeah, well, I was waiting for you to show up.”

Bucky has a confused, conflicted look in his eyes, as if trying to remember something that isn’t there. “I know we . . . we were friends,” he says haltingly, hesitantly, “but we were, we spent a lot of time together, didn’t we?”

“Yeah,” Steve admits. Part of the mock-therapy procedures that Bucky is supposed to be working through is remembering what’s real and what’s not. The doctors have told Steve that it will take some time, and it’s possible that Bucky will never fully regain his memory. “We were best friends. I guess there isn’t that much to remember out of that.”

The lie hurts, it stings, it feels wrong to say; there are so many memories he wants to tell Bucky, to say _Do you remember?_ and have Bucky say _Yes, of course_ , but he knows that it won’t ever go back to the way it used to be. He wants Bucky to say _Don’t be an idiot, there’s lots to remember._ He wants Bucky to say _No, I remember we were friends_. He wants Bucky to say _I don’t know how I could forget you_. But Bucky only shakes his head almost imperceptibly and returns his gaze to his fingers, metal and flesh, tangled together in his lap.

“I should go,” Steve says finally. “I’m not supposed to be here.” He wants Bucky to say _That’s okay, you can stay_. He wants Bucky to say _You better not leave again, Rogers_. He knows Bucky won’t say anything. “I’ll see you later, if I can.”

Bucky doesn’t look up, his hands clenched tightly together, like he’s fighting with himself and losing the battle. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t have time. I’m fine in here on my own.”

And that, those simple sentences, hurt more than a bullet in his stomach or a punch to the face, because he knows Bucky has his reason about him when he’s saying it, and he says it anyway.

He starts drawing again. At first he draws Natasha, but when he tries to colour her hair all he can think of is blood on her lips and hands as she pulls him to his feet, unrealistic and uncharacteristic terror in her eyes. He stops drawing her, because now she’s in his nightmares as well, bloodied and beaten, screaming for him while he’s unable to help her.

For a while he draws the rest of the team, the Avengers: Clint with his bow ready, fierce concentration in his eyes. Tony wearing the suit, flames bursting from his hands and scorching the ground. Bruce in the lab, working on something, immensely focused on his project. Thor and his hammer, lightning snaking around him like a wreath of electricity as he shouts at the sky. Even Fury, watching them all with that calm look of concentration that Steve wishes he could capture better on paper.

And he draws Bucky, sometimes. The first few were experiments, then it became something much more crucial. It’s become somewhat of a habit now, drawing Bucky. Quick sketches while Bucky isn’t looking develop into complete drawings, pictures that he uses to try to reconcile their selves in his mind. Sometimes he draws himself as well as Bucky, but he can never finish those sketches, not the ones of the two of them together. Sometimes he draws a sort of before and after, how they looked then and how they look now. Sometimes he draws only himself, the Steve Rogers from his memories, who hasn’t experienced blood and loss and pain and death and war, and holds it alongside his face in the mirror. The faces, especially the eyes, are so different that he can hardly believe they’re the same person.

He starts drawing his nightmares, trying to recreate the flashes of memory that plague him while he sleeps. Some of them are just confusing, distorted pictures of lights and colours, but some are more specific: Peggy. Dr Erskine. Schmidt. He doesn’t colour them, in re the old newspapers without colour, except for shading a couple of his favourites in different tones of sepia brown, as if they really were photographs from his childhood. He draws Peggy with her hair falling over her shoulder, aiming a gun at him with a smirk on her face. He draws her as he last saw her, looking up at him with grief and love mingled in her eyes, and after that drawing her puts his sketchbook away and doesn’t look at it for a long time.

“Do you know if Agent Carter—I mean Peggy—is still . . . alive?” Bucky asks him one day while they’re practising sparring in the training room, slower than usual because Bucky still trusts Steve more than he trusts himself.

Steve hesitates, pondering the question. He doesn’t want to admit that he’s never really tried to find out. “She’d be in her nineties by now, if she didn’t die in the war.” It’s gotten easier to talk so bluntly about these things, although his habit is still to look to Bucky to make sure that the words don’t trigger another flashback. “She probably isn’t alive, and even if she is, I have no idea what happened to her—if she left, got married, anything.”

Bucky steps back and shifts awkwardly. He never used to be uncomfortable around Steve, and even such a small detail hurts. It shows he isn’t the same person he used to be. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to marry her.”

“Who said anything about marrying anyone?” says Steve, slightly too quickly to be convincing. “Why would you think I would marry her?”

Bucky looks over and flashes his old trademark grin, the absently cocky one that hasn’t shown up in three quarters of a century. “A pretty dame who liked you? You won’t find many girls like that, whichever century you’re in.”

Steve forgets all about being relieved that Bucky hasn’t completely lost himself and reverts to the disgruntled mood he wore before. “You’re a smartass, you know that?”

Bucky whistles and shakes his head. “Listen to you, Rogers, cussin’ like a sailor. What’s got into you lately?”

“You’re a couple years behind the times,” Steve mutters, thinking of how lost he felt when he first woke up and heard how much time had passed. “Stuff like that’s not so uncommon now.”

“Well, goddamn,” Bucky drawls, enunciating the words almost languidly. “Never thought you’d be the one teachin’ me stuff like this, did you?”

“Not really,” Steve admits, unwrapping the tape from his hands and flexing his fingers. There are bruises on his knuckles from punching the practice bags, but he knows they’ll fade rapidly. “Hey, do you want to keep practising or go down to dinner? I won’t let anyone bother you.”

“I don’t need your help,” Bucky mutters sullenly. His eyes linger on the tape, which Steve has now rolled up and is threading between his hands absentmindedly. “I can do things on my own, you know.”

Steve continues toying with the tape, determinedly not meeting Bucky’s gaze. He’s scared that if he does, Bucky will be able to see how broken he is, and he doesn’t want them both to be that way. “Yeah, I know.”

 

***

 

Bucky finds his photograph of Peggy one day. Steve isn’t really surprised; they live on the same floor, and Bucky’s in his room more often than he’s anywhere else. Steve keeps the picture on the table beside his bed, where it’s safe. The edges are crinkled and yellowed, brittle with age, but considering what it’s been through, he’s impressed that it’s survived this long.

Bucky turns the scrap of newspaper over in the palm of his hand that’s still human, looking down at it with a half-confused, half-nostalgic expression on his face. “This that girl who liked you?”

“Yeah,” Steve says; it’s a rough summary of Peggy, and he wants to explain her better, to describe who she was, but he can’t find the right words. Bucky isn’t listening, anyway. “That’s the only picture I have of her.”

“She’s pretty,” Bucky mutters, half to himself. He looks up and frowns, confusion still settled in his face and his eyes. “This the only picture you got? I mean, of anything? Not just her.”

Steve sits down next to Bucky on his bed and takes his makeshift photo album out from the top drawer of the dresser. He’s tried to find as many pictures as he can. At first they were only of him, so that he could better understand who he was, but then pictures of the war, a few of the men he fought with, the première of Tomorrowland, started slipping in. The book rests on their knees, and Bucky touches the pages hesitantly, as if unsure that it’s permitted.

“It’s okay,” Steve says quietly, when Bucky glances at him uneasily. The last few pages have newspaper clippings and photographs Natasha gave him, pictures mainly of the Winter Soldier. “For research purposes,” Steve told Natasha, and she smiled in a way that meant she understood and slid him the file under the table.

Bucky runs his fingers hesitantly over the paper, something that looks a lot like regret present in his eyes when he looks up at Steve. The fierce intensity of his gaze is vaguely frightening to see, but it also puts Steve in mind of bitterness. What Bucky has gone through is nearly unfathomable.

“Here,” Steve says gently. He flips to the last page. “I have one from—before.” His fingertips skim the surface of the paper. The photograph is cut from an old newspaper, showing the two of them, Steve still in the ridiculous costume and Bucky in his uniform, arms around each other, grinning at the camera. The headline reads, “ _Captain America Rescues Captured Soldiers_.” It’s from the first time he saved Bucky, seventy years ago.

“That’s me,” Bucky says, halfway between a statement and a question. His hair falls in his face when he leans forwards, and he brushes it away impatiently. “It looks like me,” he adds, in the same uncertain tone of voice. “And that’s you.”

Steve understands the confusion: The people in the picture look infinitely different, in the way they smile, in their eyes, in the lines of their faces, in the ways they carry themselves. Seventy years younger and without a metal arm, the picture version of Bucky appears mockingly happy.

“I rescued you and a bunch of other guys,” Steve explains, hoping that something he says will spark a memory for Bucky. “You were trapped and I came and got you all out of there. Then we blew up some stuff and got away.”

Bucky looks down at the picture again, mouth slightly open in confusion. “I was captured?”

“By the enemy,” Steve says hopefully. Bucky has a way of making his statements sound like questions. “In Italy. We made it out and walked back to where our men were, and that’s why they took a picture. You were in the best part of the army, and the enemy ended up attacking and killing lots of the men in that part. Then they took more prisoner.” It feels strange to recount what should be obvious, especially since it’s been so long since he willingly brought back the memories. The one time he talks about the war, and it’s with someone who was there but doesn’t remember.

Bucky doesn’t answer, and after a while he closes the book and glances up at Steve. “Thank you.”

Steve knows how much it means for Bucky to say those simple words that truly aren’t simple at all. “It’s not a big deal,” he says, trying to pass it off as something he does every day, even though the entire thing is uncharted territory that he’s never been to before.

Bucky nods and looks down, flexing the fingers on his metal arm, then he gets up and walks out of the room. Steve wants to run after him, to make sure he’s all right, to keep him safe, but he knows it won’t help. For now, all he can do is be there if Bucky needs him.

When he stands on the bridge and realises— _it’s Bucky, the Winter Soldier is Bucky_ —something in him that he didn’t realise has been healing breaks all over again. It’s impossible, impossible that Bucky could be here— _he’s just reconciled with himself the idea that Bucky is dead, lost to him completely, gone forever, when he sees him again_ —and it hurts. He looks different, not just his outer appearance, the metal arm and the long hair and the scowl; his eyes are lost and broken and something has shattered inside him. It breaks something else when he says harshly, with genuine confusion, “Who the hell is Bucky?”

Steve tries to tell him, both then and many times afterwards, but he can never find the right words. How can he explain who Bucky was— _is_ , who he is? There’s no definition for someone like that, there’s no words to describe him, not even when he’s trying to tell Bucky who he is now. “He’s my best friend, my brother, the only one I have left,” he tries to say, that first time, the second time on a bridge, but it comes out as “You know me.”

“No, I don’t,” Bucky says wildly, sounding close to snapping. He lunges at Steve, who doesn’t understand, he doesn’t understand, why, after all this time, after so long of hoping and wishing and dreaming, _why_ has everything gone wrong?

“Bucky,” Steve says desperately. Everything seems to be collapsing in front of him; it is. “You’ve known me your entire life. Your name,” he has to choke back a sob, stop himself from crying, “is James Buchanan Barnes . . .”

_I’m not gonna fight you. You’re my friend._

_You’re my mission!_

_Then finish it. ’Cause I’m with you ’til the end of the line._

He never wanted to fight. All he wanted was to save everyone, and to stop the war. That was the only reason he had for enlisting: _No one else dies_. Maybe he hasn’t saved everyone, but he’s saved himself as best as he can, and he’s saved Bucky.

So maybe it’s him who’s a ghost story, not Bucky. Maybe it’s both of them. They should have died three quarters of a century ago. _A man out of time_ , Loki calls him, before he knows who Loki really is. It feels more like he’s out of chances. Maybe the next time he’ll stay dead. Maybe that’ll be better than surviving for this long.

 

***

 

Natasha finds him sometime, when he’s trying to hide from everyone, somewhere deep in the Helicarrier. She drops down onto the floor next to him and ruffles her hair. It’s clear she’s been working from the smell of perfume lingering around her and the traces of blood not completely cleaned from under her fingernails. “How’re you holding up?”

“I’m fine,” Steve lies quietly. He doesn’t want Natasha to worry, but she knows, and she sees right through his farce. That’s one of the many wonderful things he appreciates about Natasha, her ability to understand and to know, really know, what he means.

“Bullshit.” Natasha wipes lipstick from her mouth and Steve winces slightly; he’s gotten more used to women cursing, but it still makes him flinch when she wields epithets like knives, just as deadly. “Is it because of Bucky?”

“Isn’t everything,” Steve says with only a slight hint of bitterness.

Natasha leans sideways and rests her head on his knees, and Steve automatically shifts to make the position more comfortable for her. “Whatever it is, have you talked to him about it?”

Steve scoffs and looks questioningly at her. “You want me to have a conversation with him about stupid stuff I think about? He’s not ready to handle that, and I don’t want him to be. I don’t want him to have to deal with too much.”

“You have to let him grow up,” Natasha murmurs softly, brushing her hair out of her eyes, and a few soft strands brush against his knee. “You can’t look out for him forever. It won’t help him to recover, you know.”

“I know,” Steve responds honestly. “I’m trying.”

Natasha sighs and doesn’t say anything, and for a while they sit in silence, Natasha absentmindedly playing with the small knife she wears strapped to her ankle. After a long moment she sits back up, gets to her feet in a motion more agile than a cat’s, and offers Steve her hand. “Want to come practice with Clint and me?”

Steve is only slightly surprised to realise that he actually does. He takes Natasha’s hand and together they walk to the weapons room, not speaking, and not needing to speak. Clint is already there, firing arrow after arrow at various targets, making Steve feel inadequate in comparison. Natasha lets go of Steve’s hand and walks over to Clint, picking up a set of knives— _her preferred weapon_ —and taking her place next to him.

“Hey, if my opinions are worth anything, I think he’s gonna get better,” Clint says, patting him on the shoulder as he walks back behind Natasha to reload his bow. “You just have to give him some time, stay on track, make sure to focus on the target. Else he might lose it and go on another killing spree, and I’m not so keen on that idea. But, you know. No pressure, right?”

“Barton, you need to work on your comforting techniques,” Natasha interjects, picking up a knife from a table and sending it whirling towards a target. The knife sticks in the centre and stays there, vibrating slightly.

Clint nods, impressed. “See, that’s what I mean,” he says. “She keeps her focus on the target.”

Natasha sends the next knife into the wall right next to Clint’s head, which shuts him up effectively. Steve is still slightly scared of her, even now that they’re friends—after all, he’s seen what she can do.

“You know, the last time I was in Germany and saw a man standing above everyone else,” Steve tells Loki, in Stuttgart, surrounded by kneeling crowds of well-dressed civilians, “he and I ended up disagreeing.”

“Did you actually get to meet Hitler?” asks Natasha later. She’s throwing knives again, sending them directly where she wants them to go, hitting the practice targets over and over again. “While you were in Germany.”

“No, actually,” Steve admits, and tells her about Schmidt. He tells her about everything except for Peggy. Knowing Natasha the way he does, she would probably find a way to track her down if she’s still alive, produce pictures and stories and relations, and answer the questions that have plagued him so frequently. For some reason, Steve doesn’t know if he wants all of that to happen. Somehow Peggy’s become a part of his other life, the one that he doesn’t want to remember.

Natasha stops throwing knives and picks up a gun. She fires a few rounds experimentally before setting the weapon down on the table and turning back to Steve. “So the blue cube . . . that must have . . . that must have been the Tesseract.”

“You know about it?” asks Steve almost eagerly. He knows nearly nothing about the mysterious power source, except that it had caused Schmidt to vanish and had powered Zola’s experiments. Other than that, he has no idea.

“No,” Natasha says bluntly. And Steve isn’t a genius like the rest of the people who are associated with SHIELD, but even he recognises that she’s lying to him.

When he does eventually get to talk with Bruce, he learns that Bruce’s “problem” was a result of a serum similar to the one used on him. “The scientists I was working with, we were trying to replicate it,” Bruce explains. “I tested it on myself, but it didn’t work out so well.”

“The serum was meant to enhance everything, including non-physical qualities,” Steve adds, warming up to the idea of someone else who knows a little bit more about his past.

“Exactly. No one’s been able to recreate it properly.” Bruce gives him an appreciative look, then turns back to his work. “Obviously, my version didn’t have the same effect on me as the original version had on you.”

Steve feels suddenly ashamed for all the times he’s complained about the serum. Bruce ended up with an extremely bipolar set of anger issues that he can barely control, and all that Steve has to deal with are super-strength and the ability to feel. “You’re completely sure there’s no cure?”

“None that I’ve found, and I’ve been pretty thorough,” Bruce says, although he doesn’t sound completely resentful: There’s a hint of relief mixed in with the regret. “All our problems seem to come from not minding our own business, don’t you think?”

“I can’t honestly disagree,” Steve murmurs. He doesn’t tell Bruce about how he doesn’t entirely believe that what Fury is doing is without ulterior motives, about how he questions whether or not they’re doing the right things, about how many innocent people he’s seen killed every time they have to defend the world against some new attack.

Bruce sighs heavily at that, and then he goes back to his computer, typing complicated equations on a complicated machine, neither of which Steve understands. “You’re a good man, Rogers.”

 

***

 

Bucky has taken to spending more time in Steve’s room, and while Steve doesn’t mind, he’s worried. “He needs time to recover,” Doctor Cho tells him when he explains why he’s worried about Bucky. “He’s lucky to have you helping him, but it’ll still take a while for him to get used to how things are today. Try talking to him. It might help.”

Steve nods and acts as if he understands, although he still worries. He decides eventually to go with Doctor Cho’s suggestion, and try to talk to Bucky. He doesn’t know what to say. Superficial pleasantries have never been his thing, and his social skills have hardly improved over time.

In the end, he doesn’t even mean to start a conversation. They’re eating breakfast together, silent as usual. Bucky is carefully avoiding touching things with his metal arm, as if worried he’ll break something. He seems so uncomfortable, so out of place, that Steve can’t help himself.

“What happened to your arm, by the way? I mean, if you want to tell me,” he adds hastily, remembering that Bucky doesn’t like to talk about himself in general, much less where his past as the Winter Soldier is concerned.

Bucky looks at him and holds up his right arm, his face a perfect mask of confusion. “I don’t see anything wrong with it. Your eyes must be going, Rogers.”

“I’m not that old,” Steve counters, “you’re technically still a bit older than I am.”

“I try not to think about the complicated part of stuff like that,” Bucky admits. “As for the arm . . . I guess I lost it when I was in the Alps. I don’t remember much. Every time I think I know something, it turns out I was wrong.” He examines the metal fingers absently. “Reckon I could take you in arm wrestling now, huh?”

For a moment, Steve thinks he sees a flash of the old version of Bucky, hidden behind the mask of the Winter Soldier. It’s stupidly relieving to see again, like he’s a puzzle with one more piece put back into place. “In your dreams, Buck.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Bucky rolls his eyes, and for a moment Steve feels like they’re kids again, laughing and teasing each other. Bucky shakes his head in exasperation, but he’s grinning too. Now Steve imagines the roles have completely reversed: The Winter Soldier is the one behind the mask, and Bucky is in control. It might not be much, but it’s a step in the right direction.

But the masks are swapped again later, when they’re in the weapons room. Bucky wants to start training again, and Doctor Cho agrees, as long as Steve is present as well. Bucky does well with the simpler exercises in hand-to-hand combat techniques that Natasha shows him, specifically targeted to help his mobility and level of comfort in regards to working with his metal arm.

Bucky starts to work with some different weapons, and he’s fine until he gets to Natasha’s table of knives. He selects a knife and turns towards the target, and at first everything seems normal. But Steve picks up on the way Bucky’s fingers clench around the handle of the knife, his body tensing, his face suddenly closed off. Steve freezes where he is, holding up his hands cautiously. “Bucky, it’s me. It’s okay. You’re okay. Nothing’s wrong.”

Natasha doesn’t move either, but her hand tightens on the edge of another knife. Steve takes a wary step forwards. “Bucky, give me the knife, okay? Everything’s fine, you’re fine, you’re safe.”

There’s a terrifying moment of indecision, then Bucky drops the knife with a clatter and stumbles forwards, nearly collapsing. His eyes are blank and empty, with no signs of recognition. Steve grabs him by the shoulders and Bucky wraps both of his arms around him, holding on desperately. He’s shaking, and Steve casts his mind around wildly: _Knives, why was a knife a trigger?_ At once terrible images cross his imagination, thoughts of torture and blood and cuts, and he decides he doesn’t want to think about it.

“I used a knife,” Bucky chokes, without letting go of Steve. “To kill all those people. I had to hold them down at first, I had to kill them . . .” Something like a sob escapes him. “I had to cut them, to make them bleed. They made me. I wanted to do it, in the end.”

Natasha is still standing warily near the table, but when Steve glances over at her, she silently starts to clean up the weapons. When she’s done, she flashes him a brief, hopeful smile, then nods and leaves the room.

Steve realises absently that he’s still taller than Bucky; the realisation does little to abet him. Bucky finally steps back; some of the light has returned to his eyes, although he’s still clearly terrified, lost in whatever flashback he had. “Where’d Natasha go?” he mumbles, glancing around.

“I guess she left,” Steve says vaguely. He doesn’t want Bucky to worry about her, but he also doesn’t want her to become another trigger. “Do you want to go back to—our room?” He almost says _your_ , almost corrects it to _my_ , and ends up with _our_ instead.

Bucky nods wordlessly. Steve leads him back to the room, still unsure how to proceed. He’s never dealt with something like this before, and it’s blatantly clear that if he makes a mistake, the consequences could be extremely dangerous for them both.

Steve has Bucky sit on his bed again, and then he sits next to him. “It’s okay, got it? It’s okay not to be perfect. Bucky . . . I don’t want anything else to happen to you. Tell me if something is a trigger for you, okay? _Please_.”

“I hate it,” Bucky says, fists clenched. “I hate what I did, what they made me do. I hate myself for doing it.” He looks at Steve almost viciously, his eyes dark with pain. “It would’ve been better if they had never found me in the first place.”

“No.” Steve grabs Bucky by the wrists, completely disregarding the continuous warnings he’s been given about limiting physical contact until Bucky’s recovered more. “No way in hell am I letting you say stuff like that about yourself. I _need_ you, Bucky. You deserve to live, not to die, whenever you want to talk about.”

Bucky nods silently, his dark eyes staring at a point somewhere over Steve’s shoulder. There’s a knock on the door, and Steve gets up and pulls it open, suddenly furious. He doesn’t know exactly why, except for the fact he would have expected more sense from Natasha, considering. “Natasha, I thought you knew I was busy with—” He stops, because it isn’t Natasha.

“Not Natasha, although I’ve been told we do look remarkably alike,” Stark says smoothly, “and I am here on her behalf, so don’t give me that look. How’s your Robocop?”

Steve frowns and glares at Tony, who appears unperturbed. “Bucky’s fine,” he says guardedly. “Why did Natasha send you?”

Tony raises his eyebrows and spreads his hands in an all-encompassing gesture. “She and Legolas got called to Fury’s office, so she told me to check in on you. If you must know, she threatened me with extensive bodily harm if I refused to comply, so I did have my ulterior motives. Don’t worry, Capsicle, she’s fine.”

“Do you have irritating nicknames for everyone?” asks Steve, slightly annoyed. He doesn’t understand half of what Tony is saying.

“Not for everyone; Fury’s name is pretty appropriate.” Tony shoves his hands into his pockets and leans casually against the frame of the door.”Speaking of the boss, he does want to talk to you later today. The impression I gathered is that it’s about your Robocop.”

“He’s not my anything,” Steve says, irritated.

Tony raises one eyebrow sceptically. “Keep telling yourself that, Cap, and it’ll come true. Your choice.” He shrugs and steps back casually. “It doesn’t affect me, of course, but if that’s what you want, then I couldn’t care less.”

Steve shuts the door in his face, ignoring the look of stunned surprise on Tony’s face; his voice is slightly muffled when he next speaks. “Does this mean I can tell Natasha that I talked to you, then?”

“I can tell her myself,” Steve says through the door. He hears Tony’s footsteps fading and heads back to his room. Bucky’s lying on the bed, his human arm thrown over his face. His eyes are closed, but Steve isn’t sure he’s asleep until he whispers Bucky’s name and Bucky doesn’t respond. Steve gently touches Bucky’s cheek and brushes the hair away from his face. Bucky doesn’t move.

He finds Natasha in the meeting room; it’s probable she’s been waiting for him, but she doesn’t acknowledge him until he sits down next to her. Her fingers are tangled in the necklace she wears around her neck, the tiny silver charm in the shape of an arrow. He wonders if it’s meant to represent Clint or not. Something tells him she won’t want to talk about it, and he knows he should respect that.

“Can I ask you something?” he says, leaning forwards and placing his elbows on the table. She doesn’t look up; she’s still playing with the arrow charm, autumn-leaf hair covering the side of her face. She stays silent for a long time before responding.

“Of course,” Natasha murmurs, releasing her necklace and sitting up straight, flipping her hair back over her shoulder. She turns her head to the side and studies him absentmindedly, although even that makes him feel as though she’s examining his soul from the outside. She’s good with that sort of thing.

Steve hesitates again; he doesn’t want to delve deeper into the uncertain metaphorical waters of emotions that he knows Bucky is already struggling to comprehend and that he also knows of which Natasha has never been fond. “What do you do when you find out you picked the wrong person to fall in love with?”

“This isn’t about Peggy,” Natasha says. It’s a statement, not a question, and he’s glad of that. “I think you can either choose to accept it, or to try to move on. In general, it goes one of those two ways. Have you talked to him about it?”

“Sometimes,” Steve deadpans, “I hate how observant you are.”

Natasha winks charmingly. “I’m the best, darling. Always have been. I’ll take it as if he has no idea, and let’s go from there. Sound good?” Steve shrugs, and she continues. “He’s probably really confused and you’re basically his only anchor, you know. I would be careful, and take it slow. As Clint would say, ‘keep your focus on the target.’”

“I just,” Steve tries to explain, “you know, I’m Captain America, right? I’m supposed to be perfect, because I’m the goddamn poster boy for the States. Do people still say that? The States?” Natasha shakes her head, smiling faintly. “Well, something. I’m supposed to be perfect, right, and I’m sure this kind of thing isn’t what they had in mind.”

He says they vaguely, as if to mean anyone in the world who knows him, but he’s really thinking about Dr Erskine, and Peggy, and all of the unnamed soldiers who died when they followed him into battle because they trusted what he told them to do, who believed in what he said he stood for—it seems almost like a betrayal on his part now, even to think about those kinds of things.

“But remember, it isn’t up to them who you are,” Natasha says gently. “That part is yours to control. Maybe you’re not perfect. No one is, although Stark would beg to differ. But what doesn’t matter. I’m not even close to how I want to be. I’m an ex-KGB agent who used to kill for a living. Now I try to save the world. Most of the time, nothing makes sense. But I still have to deal with it. And so do you.”

“You think?” says Steve quietly, not intending it to be an actual question. He’s appreciative that being sarcastic towards women isn’t looked down upon nearly as much, or his relationship with Natasha would be much less fun.

Natasha sighs and reaches for her necklace again, holding the tiny arrow against her throat. “You should talk to him. I don’t care if it isn’t exactly how you imagined it. Things never are, you know? But you’re not gonna get anywhere if you don’t take a risk.”

Steve frowns and looks over at her. She raises her eyebrows and gets to her feet, less agile than before but still graceful. “Natasha, I don’t know what to say.”

“Just say what you think,” Natasha says kindly, then drops her hand briefly onto his shoulder before she leaves the room. Steve stares after her, thinking. He knows he’s procrastinating, but he doesn’t care.

He doesn’t understand when Agent Coulson keeps talking about what an honour it is to meet him, how glad he is to have him on the ship— _the Helicarrier_ , Natasha calls it—and Steve wants to ask, _Why is everyone acting like I’m the big deal?_ but he doesn’t say anything. Coulson treats him like an idol, and Steve is completely confused.

“We’re all a bit in awe of you,” Bruce explains. Steve goes to him for answers because he can immediately sense that Bruce won’t be one of those people who make fun of him for not knowing everything. “You became kind of a legend after you vanished, Captain. You played a big part in the war, and everyone knows about that now.”

 _I’m not a big deal at all_ , he wants to say, but he knows it wouldn’t be considered the proper thing to say. He wants to say _I killed more men than I saved_ , he wants to say _Most of it want even me, I was just the man in a costume who did what he was told_. But instead he nods in acceptance and listens to Coulson talk about how honoured he would be if Steve could sign his trading cards, which happen to be vintage. Steve can’t help but like the man; he reminds him of Dr Erskine, in a way.

When Loki kills Coulson and escapes the Helicarrier, Steve blames himself. He was fixing the engine, but he should have been making sure no one died. He wasn’t helping that much, and then it resulted in someone else dying. It’s his fault again. Again.

He’s so sick of everyone treating him like a hero when all he does is try to save everyone and fail over and over again. He’s no hero; he only wants the fighting to end. The heroes in these wars are the men who are known for fighting. He’s known for not wanting to fight. It isn’t the same. People seem to forget that so easily.

They call him back to SHIELD to fight in order to defend New York against something that Natasha explains are called the Chitauri. When he stands in the middle of the city, he can see how much it’s changed. Brooklyn isn’t his home any more. He isn’t even sure he has a home any more. If he does, it’s with his friends—Natasha, Clint, Bucky. The ones who haven’t died yet.

He stays in the meeting room for a while, watching the deserted screens flash images of various cameras, watching the city from different vantage points. He sees scenes of everyday life that he never would have imagined could happen. Recovery. Acceptance. Admittance. Times have changed, and so has he.

“You spying on something, or just watching?”

Steve turns and sees Bucky standing in the doorway, tilting his head to the side questioningly. “I’m just watching,” he says; Bucky sits next to him and looks curiously at the monitors. “They have cameras that can show you places anywhere in the world now. Satellites and stuff like that. It’s pretty weird.”

“Yeah?” Bucky frowns as he watches the images on the screens, eyes scanning them in wonder. “Never thought I’d be able to see things like this when I joined the army, or anything that came after.”

“I try not to think about what came after that part,” Steve admits in a low voice.

Bucky laughs bitterly. “Sounds about right.” His eyes follow a group of tourists walking happily across one of the screens of the cameras. “Bet you were just as bad as me when you were woken up for the first time and didn’t know what was goin’ on.”

“I was worse, I think,” Steve admits, whether it’s true or not. “I didn’t know a damn thing. I don’t even know if I know now.”

“I’m sick of people treating me like I’m too fragile to understand what they’re saying,” Bucky says shortly. “I know most of what they talk about, I just don’t wanna think it over, you know? I’m not some helpless little kid, I know how to fight and all that.”

Steve exhales slowly; he wishes he were better with words so he could be able to explain everything he wants to say, every single word that sounds like the sweetest epithet to him. “You want to try practising again sometime? It doesn’t have to be with knives and stuff.”

Bucky nods and sighs. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

They watch the screens together, in silence, and Steve doesn’t mind that Natasha would be yelling at him about many different things if she was here, because right then she isn’t—it’s just him and Bucky again.

 

***

 

Doctor Cho warns Steve over and over again that Bucky is likely to be unresponsive to physical contact, which is why he was confused in the training room. “Remember, he’s been through a lot,” she says, when Steve asks her about how Bucky’s been doing. “It’s likely he won’t be very open to touch, but you should start introducing some if you want to help him recover. Be careful, with everything.”

Steve is getting extremely tired of all the people he knows telling him repeatedly to be careful. He doesn’t want to force Bucky to do anything, but he also has to admit that part of him misses the old version of Bucky, who always had that infectious smile and was always ready to have fun. Now he looks like he hasn’t smiled in years. Steve makes his mood much worse by reminding himself that Bucky probably hasn’t smiled in years.

The night after Natasha tells Steve how to do things and he and Bucky watch New York on the camera screens, he takes out his old sketchbook and starts drawing again. He sketches Natasha in pencil, kicking a faceless man in the head. He draws Clint, a rough image of him leaning against a desk. He draws Bruce’s face and the Hulk’s next to each other. He draws Tony without the suit. He draws Fury standing behind them all, watching and presiding as usual.

He draws Bucky, antebellum and postbellum, and compares them. He draws himself in those two forms, and doesn’t bother to compare them. He draws the two of them, experimenting with different angles. He only uses the one pencil, since he no longer uses the coloured pencils to draw. He draws absently, thinking about other things, not focusing on what he’s doing.

The first time he meets Natasha, he’s still in SHIELD custody, not allowed to venture out into the world. The initial shock of displacement has dulled into a deep ache which never leaves him. He still wakes up screaming for Bucky to hold on. He still dreams of Peggy and wakes up with tears staining the sheets.

He spends most of his time training, pushing himself to the imagined limit, trying to see how far he can go in this new time before he isn’t able to stand any more. He trains with weapons, in hand-to-hand combat, with his shield, against other agents Fury supplies him with, anything he can. Fury watches his progress at first, but after a while he stops attending the training sessions and sends a red-headed woman in his stead. Steve is still lost in the forties. He still doesn’t think women should fight. Peggy is—no, _was_ , he has to keep reminding himself bitterly—the exception.

The woman who watches him now is never impressed. Steve starts to try to show off, working even harder than he has been, but she doesn’t appear to be the least bit amazed. Either that, or she has a remarkable poker face. He hasn’t played poker in over seventy years.

One day, when she’s watching him working on hand sparring drills with another agent, she decides to interrupt his practice. Her voice cuts clearly through the room, sharp and forceful, like an army sergeant’s. “You’re holding his wrist wrong.”

Steve stops and looks at her. The drill’s been giving him a bit of trouble, but he refuses to allow himself to get irritated, especially not in front of a lady. “With all due respect, ma’am, I don’t think so.”

She walks over to stand next to him, and the man he’s been practising on moves over to stand in front of her obligingly. “Watch. Grab from underneath, not the side. It should work much better. Like this.” She shifts her weight and sends the man smoothly to the ground in one fluid movement. Her body moves so quickly that Steve can barely see what she’s just done.

“I guess he gave you an easy target,” Steve mumbles. He can’t believe a girl who isn’t Peggy has just bested him in his own drill.

The woman doesn’t even respond. She grabs his wrist and easily spins around on her heel, and in an instant Steve finds himself lying on his back with the wind knocked out of him. The woman brushes off her clothes, leans over, and offers him her hand. “Natasha Romanov. Code name Black Widow. Professional assassin, spy for SHIELD. Please don’t ever try to challenge me again. It’ll only get more embarrassing over time. For you.”

Steve allows her to pull him to his feet. She’s surprisingly strong. “Steve Rogers. Code name, uh, Captain America. I guess. And don’t worry, ma’am, I won’t make the mistake of challenging you ever again.”

Natasha flashes a wide, friendly, likeable smile. Somehow, Steve senses that she can be even more dangerous than she’s already just proven herself to be. “See now, you’re already learning.”

When he looks up, Natasha is standing over him, hands reaching for him, blood the colour of her hair dripping from her skin. Her eyes are desperate, her flesh torn. Blood is everywhere, staining her clothing, filling the air with its stench, sticking to his hands as he tries to grab her and to pull her back. She collapses lifelessly to the floor, hair melting into the rapidly growing pool of blood, and he wakes abruptly. Bucky is standing over him.

Steve pushes himself into a sitting position. “What’s wrong, Buck?”

“I heard you screaming,” Bucky says bluntly in a low voice, as if worried he’s doing something wrong. “Did something happen?”

Steve manages to nod and shake his head at the exact same time. “No, I . . . I just had a nightmare, that’s all. It’s nothing to worry about.” He realises his sketchbook has fallen off the bed after he fell asleep, and he leans down to pick it up. It’s fallen open to a rough sketch of Bucky on the second bridge, the second time he thought he was going to lose him and it would be entirely his fault.

Bucky’s eyes flicker to the book, then quickly away. “I have nightmares too,” he says carefully, “you know? So I guess what I mean is I understand.”

“Yeah?” Steve closes his sketchbook and shoves it under his pillow. He moves his legs and Bucky hesitates for only a moment before he sits down awkwardly. “Well, if you ever . . . I mean if I . . . don’t think you can’t wake me up if it’s bad, okay? I don’t mind it. And I’m sorry if I woke you up.”

“I don’t mind either,” Bucky says flatly, “and you didn’t, I wasn’t asleep.” He rests his metal arm on his leg and his human one on his knees. “I’m supposed to be the one looking out for you, I think. You’re not supposed to be looking out for me.”

“We look out for each other,” Steve says fiercely. “I’m not going to lose you ever again.” There’s something about talking in the middle of the night which allows him to speak more freely. He knows he’ll say things he’ll regret, most likely. It hits him that being extremely tired is probably to him what being drunk is to other people.

Bucky leans forwards and turns his head so that their gazes are level. “We’re so screwed up, you know?”

Steve nods in agreement, because there’s really nothing else he can honestly do. “Yeah, but it’s okay because we’re both screwed up, so it doesn’t matter what anyone else says.”

Bucky tries to reach over to Steve with his left arm, but miscalculates and his metal fingers close on Steve’s shoulder. He has to force himself not to flinch away from the unfamiliar touch. Bucky pulls his arm away immediately, clearly worried that he’s messed up again. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay,” Steve reassures him. Bucky reaches out again, and touches Steve’s face gently, curiously. Steve catches his fingers and holds them against his cheek. “I don’t mind. You’re still . . .” It would be stupid to say You’re still the same person, so he ends his sentence somewhat pathetically. “You’re still Bucky.”

“That’s what everyone keeps telling me,” Bucky mumbles. He places his other hand on Steve’s face and pulls him close until their foreheads are touching. “But I still don’t know, who I am.”

Steve holds his breath and counts to ten in his head before he figures out what to say in response. “You’re my best friend. Your name,” and he reaches up to put his arm around Bucky’s shoulders, “is James Buchanan Barnes . . .”

“That’s good enough for me right now,” Bucky whispers. Steve isn’t certain exactly how it happens, but suddenly one or both of them moves in and presses their mouths together awkwardly. It’s quick and sloppy and clumsy, but Steve still feels something tie itself back together inside him.

Bucky pulls back first, eyes wide. “Shit, I’m sorry,” he gasps, looking horrorstruck. “I wasn’t thinking, I swear to God I’m not a faggot, I just . . .”

Steve holds up his hands to stop him. “No, no, it’s fine—I mean, that kind of stuff is allowed now.” He doesn’t feel like Captain America at the moment, only a skinny, awkward kid from Brooklyn. “I, um. It isn’t really a bad thing any more. I guess.”

Bucky grins unexpectedly. “You know, they say you’re a big deal around here, Rogers, but you ain’t changed a bit since the first time I met you.”

“Well, I got taller,” Steve offers halfheartedly.

“Oh, well, in that case,” Bucky says sarcastically, and pulls Steve into another kiss, laughing. “Damnit, this is—I never thought we would be allowed to do this, you know.” For once, it isn’t a question. “It’s okay now, you said?”

“Yeah,” Steve says breathlessly, thinking about how much he owes Natasha for everything. “Yeah, it’s definitely okay.”

 

***

 

It doesn’t stay that simple, the two of them alone and keeping each other together and alive and sane, because nothing in his entire goddamn life can be simple and get away with it. For a while everything seems to go back to normal—practising drills with Natasha, occasionally saving the world from attack, helping Bucky work through his countless nightmares. Steve is beginning to get sick of all the times he wakes up feeling something’s out of place and finds Bucky gone.

Bucky never tells him where he goes, just returns in the morning cold and shivering, even in the summer, and accepts the blanket and hot tea Steve gets him. At least, Steve tries to placate himself, at least Bucky isn’t having more panic attacks, or hiding his flashbacks, but the fact that he doesn’t tell Steve where he goes is starting to make him wonder how well he really knows his friend.

_I’ve known you for my whole life._

But that, even that knowledge isn’t enough to allow him to guess where Bucky goes when he disappears. Steve decides to find out, telling himself it’s the responsible thing to do as a friend, not permitting himself to think about being anything else.

“I don’t know where he’s going,” Tony says, looking up from the computer. “He’s in the databases, so he’s allowed free access to the tower, and doesn’t have to sign in. the retinal scans are good, so there’s no chance of messing up. And he could easily get out without the tower tracking where he’s going. Sorry, Capsicle, I don’t know.”

Steve thanks Tony, even though he hasn’t been helpful at all, and goes to Natasha. He still hasn’t told her about what happened the night he had the nightmare about her and Bucky found him. He isn’t sure why, other than the argument that he doesn’t have to tell her, because it isn’t a big deal at all. Nothing to worry about.

“Do you want me to track him?” asks Natasha calmly, as though it’s a perfectly normal thing to do, offer to stalk one of your friends, to shadow them—he thinks suddenly about how they call Natasha _the Slavic Shadow_ , and he wonders what she did to earn that name. He probably doesn’t want to know.

Steve sighs and paces back and forth, ignoring her eyes on him. “No, I don’t want you to track him. I don’t want to do that, I want him to be able to tell me what’s going on. Dammit, Natasha, I want him to understand that I don’t care about what he did, all I care about is that he’s okay.”

“I know you do,” Natasha says gently. She hesitates uncharacteristically, then lifts her head to look at him with her piercing eyes. “Did you ever talk to him after we spoke the last time?”

Cryptically astute, accurately intelligent, remarkably dangerous. Sometimes he hates how Natasha seems to know everything about him before even he does. “Yes, I talked to him. Christ, Natasha. What am I going to do?”

Natasha doesn’t waver for an instant, and he admires that, files it away again to marvel over when he has time to acknowledge what a wonderfully incredible person Natasha Romanov truly is. “Pick a path, and stick to it. But respect his privacy.”

Steve doesn’t answer. He doesn’t think he could say anything helpful at all.

“Oh, shit.” Natasha stands up and walks to him, taking him by the shoulders and pulling him towards her so that she’s looking up at him fiercely. “Look, I’m sick of you both wallowing around in self-pity when you could be doing so much more. I’m sick of all this angsty moping because you two are ninety-some years old and still don’t know how to talk to each other. How hard can it be, Steve Rogers, to tell someone you love them?”

“You don’t understand,” Steve says, because she doesn’t, there’s no way she can, it isn’t possible.

“Oh, don’t I?” Natasha’s voice is dangerous. “You’re trying to say that I don’t understand how you feel because no one, no one in the entire world, has ever had a stupid crush on someone who didn’t like them back before. Yeah, _that’s_ totally true. Now listen to me for a moment—please listen to me. I don’t know exactly what’s best for you, but I’m not an idiot. And I’m willing to bet that you haven’t actually asked him _where_ he’s going.”

Steve hesitates, because he feels like a complete idiot for not thinking, because he can’t admit she’s right, because he can’t honestly say she’s wrong. “Yeah, Natasha, you’re the best, I’m gonna go now.”

Natasha’s grin bursts suddenly across her face, bright and euphoric. She leans in and kisses him swiftly on the cheek, then winks and steps back. “Have fun.”

And Steve actually does contemplate going to find Bucky, and talking to him again, and trying to explain, but he knows it won’t help, so instead he leaves Natasha and goes back to the training room where he knows no one will bother him and practises until his hands are bleeding and his arms are sore. It’s one of the few ways he’s found to allow himself to remain sane.

Things don’t get immediately better after the conversation with Natasha, but to be honest he wouldn’t exactly know what to do if it did—although he isn’t completely sure that anything he’s doing at the moment is the right thing, either, so it really doesn’t make much of a difference.

He goes back to drawing, deliberately staying up late into the night, trying to finish some of his sketches. He finds the coloured pencils somewhere in one of his drawers, and tries to colour everything in shades of grey, as realistic as possible. He tries to draw Natasha’s hair again, and it comes out bloodred and shocking, but it doesn’t make him wake up screaming. Maybe he’s moved on. Maybe he wants to move on. Maybe he’s lying to himself again, lying about the whole damn thing.

The dreams aren’t better, only different. Sometimes the sound is cut out, like an old film, or the colour is gone from everything. He knows Bucky still has nightmares and flashbacks, but every night he’s gone, and Steve never wakes up in time to catch him when he leaves. He thinks about staying up, but once again he thinks of what Natasha told him: _Respect his privacy_. God, it’s one of the oldest rules in the book, and he can never follow it well enough.

They keep fighting, trying to protect those who can’t do it themselves. He thinks it’s a little bit ironic that they are supposed to band together against the enemy when they’re always fighting amongst themselves. Some part of him thinks that maybe this is how things normally are, maybe he was lucky, but he can’t help thinking that if certain parts of this team were recruited to the army, it would have been a very different outcome to the war.

Natasha is sent on another mission, somewhere in Hungary, which sparks many jokes which Clint and Tony make every time her name is brought up; Steve doesn’t understand, knowing it’s another inside reference from a time when he didn’t know them. He’s used to not knowing things, but it still hurts a little when the people he considers his friends make that fact obvious.

Bucky doesn’t come back the next morning. At first Steve assumes that he’s just busy, distracted by something else, and is going to return soon enough like he has every other time. He wanders listlessly around the tower, wishing Natasha wasn’t gone so he could have someone to talk to, and Bucky— _please don’t leave again, I don’t want to lose you_ —isn’t there either.

“I don’t know where he is,” Tony says, frustrated, shoving the palms of his hands onto the top of the smooth cherry-wood table, glaring slightly but at least trying to cover it up with hidden concern. “I don’t know, I’ve told you that already. It isn’t my job to be babysitter for all you guys. Go ask Fury or something if you’re so desperate.”

“Fury isn’t here,” Steve reminds him, trying not to lose control and shout at Tony. Or possibly break something. “You know that, and you’re the only one who could possibly know where anyone is. If you can’t do anything, fine.” He stands up and starts to leave, fuming, then turns back for a moment. “Thanks for not helping.”

He thinks Tony mutters something along the lines of _ungrateful dickhead_ , but he really doesn’t want to know.

Natasha isn’t there, and that’s the first thing he keeps coming back to whenever he thinks about it. Somehow she’s become a sort of replacement for memory. He’s so sick of trying to remember things he doesn’t want to remember. He’s heard stories of war veterans who block out their memories, refuse to acknowledge that the war happened, deny anything they hear. He doesn’t want to end up like that, shutting out the world so that he can try to heal himself in a way he already knows isn’t going to work.

It seems like a big deal, Bucky vanishing again, but he comes back in less than a week, and doesn’t appear to remember anything about being gone. Steve doesn’t want to bring it up, unsure of what flashbacks he could trigger, but he does think of something Natasha showed him, when they were perusing the file of the Winter Soldier:  _There have been several times when he’s just disappeared from their records—look, they even have it in here, he just vanishes and doesn’t seem to have any memory. Weird, isn’t it? I think we could use that_ .

He doesn’t want to use it, not in the way Natasha suggested, before they knew who Bucky really was; he wants to use it to help his best friend. But somehow, he’s losing track of what helps and what doesn’t, when nothing that seems to help seems to make anything else better.

Bucky doesn’t talk to anyone after he returns, until Steve finally decides to take the initiative and do what Natasha has been telling him to do and talk to him. He finds Bucky in his room, his actual room, which is a startling change. He’s staring at his hands, fingers wrapped around each other, resting on his knees. Steve pushes the door open slightly and leans against the frame. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Bucky mumbles without looking up. “What’re you doing here?”

Steve doesn’t exactly know how to answer that question properly, with the answer that won’t lead to another mistake, but he doesn’t know what that answer would be. He decides to go with the honest answer. “I was worried about you.”

“You don’t have to worry,” Bucky supplies tonelessly, twisting his hands around, tightening his grip on his fingers. “I can get on fine by myself.”

“I know that,” Steve says, his default response, then decides to change it. “I know you’re fine on your own, but that doesn’t mean you have to be alone.” He steps into the room completely, disregarding again the warnings about boundaries. They don’t help in any case. “Please, Bucky, you’re my best friend. I don’t want you to get hurt again.”

“Thought Natasha was your best friend,” Bucky mutters almost sullenly, and the fact that he nearly sounds like a jealous little kid gives Steve hope that he hasn’t been lost one more time. “And Sam.”

“No one’s gonna replace you,” Steve admits quietly. He thinks it’ll be too much work to hide everything, and there’s no point in it anyway. “Natasha’s great, Sam’s great, but you’re still my best friend. And I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

Bucky glances up, the silhouette of abject misery, a hallucination of regret. “How’d you get past this? How’d you figure out what was left? When you woke up, whenever. How did you deal with it?”

“I didn’t, really,” Steve says softly, recognising the tangible bitterness in Bucky’s voice. “I kind of just got used to it.”

“Well, I haven’t yet,” Bucky replies almost sarcastically. He releases his fingers and flexes his human hand, wincing slightly. “How long was I gone?”

Steve frowns and rubs his face with the back of his hand, unsure as of how to proceed along this line of questioning. “Less than a week. Do you,” he hesitates again, “remember where you went this time?”

“Yeah.” Bucky shrugs almost imperceptibly, a small motion like he’s shirting uncomfortably in his seat, but Steve catches on to the movement. It’s something he’s seen in certain prisoners, who have been tortured into revealing information. It’s the kind of motion made by someone who wants desperately not to be touched. “I went down.”

“Down where?”

“Down,” Bucky repeats. “I don’t know. I don’t know what you’d call it.”

Steve lets his breath out slowly, measured and controlled. “All right then. Hey, if you ever want to talk to me, I’m always here. Got it? I’m never going to leave you unless I have no other option.”

Bucky looks up quickly, something ancient flashing in his eyes, a spark of remembrance. “It used to be me saving your sorry ass all the time—how the tables have turned, huh? Remember when I had to rescue you?”

“Which time?” says Steve sarcastically. “You kind of saved my ass a lot.” Memories of alleys and brick walls, bloodied noses and black eyes, pulled punches and messy cuts stream across his mind. And Bucky, always present in every memory, every one he wants to keep.

Bucky laughs shortly. “Yeah, can’t argue with that.” He tilts his head to the side in that habit of his he’s had since he was the Winter Soldier, as if waiting for a punch to come so he can block it and hit back harder. “You keep asking me if I’m okay, but what about you—are  _you_ okay, Steve? ’Cause a lot of the time you don’t seem like it.”

“God  _dammit_ ,” Steve swears, pressing his fingers into his temples. “No, okay? No, I’m not okay, not at all, because every time you disappear I keep thinking you’re not gonna come back and dammit, Bucky, I don’t want to lose you. I  _can’t_ lose you.”

Bucky drops his head into his hands and Steve chooses that as his cue to come over and sit next to him on the bed. His first instinct is to put his arm around Bucky and reassure him, but he knows better than to do something like that now; he touches Bucky’s shoulder hesitantly and then moves his hands to his lap where he can’t be tempted. Bucky shakes his head and says, his voice muffled, “I don’t want to lose you either, idiot, but I don’t know how not to, I don’t know anything any more.”

“You don’t have to know everything, or even anything, really.” Something he should have learned long before he did, long before he figured it out he should have thought of everything he uses as comfort. “It doesn’t matter.”

“You keep  _saying_ that,” Bucky says angrily, letting his hands fall to his sides, “but I’m starting to wonder how you are with  _doing_ that! It isn’t as easy as you make it sound, you know! God, I killed people, I cut their throats and shot them in the head and smashed their skulls and you know what, I liked it. I knew they were people, they could’ve had families and friends and whatever the hell else people have, and I killed them. Dead, Steve, dead; that isn’t something you can come back from, something you can make better. It’s forever, it’s never-ending, and by God, sometimes I wish I’d found a way to get to it too.”

Steve watches mutely during Bucky’s sudden speech, still uncertain, still hesitant. He touches Bucky’s arm again, and this time Bucky leans into his touch, drops his head onto Steve’s shoulder and closes his eyes. “Sorry for that, I just don’t know.”

“You think I don’t understand,” Steve almost whispers— _after all this time, it still isn’t easy to talk about, why isn’t it easy to talk about_ —and closes his eyes as well, just for a moment. “I know more than you think. I’m not someone you need to look out for any more, I went through hell like you did. I’m not okay either.”

Bucky sighs and relaxes against Steve’s shoulder, and Steve wants to turn his head, but he’s worried he’ll do something wrong that he doesn’t mean to do. “We’re so screwed up. I know I said that before, but we’re so screwed up.”

“Yeah, I know,” Steve says, then adds desperately, “let’s talk about something else, okay? Not all this, not the past, something that isn’t sad. I don’t know, the future. Pick something happy.”

“Happy, yeah,” Bucky agrees. “There isn’t much happy right now.”

“Make something then,” Steve says stubbornly. It’s something Doctor Cho has told him. He hasn’t really put it into practice until now, but although it sounds stupid, he’s somewhat desperate.

Bucky shrugs. “I guess, I’ve got my best friend and neither of us is completely dead, so that’s a start.”

“Completely dead,” Steve scoffs. “Not completely dead, only partially?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, ragged and broken, even while he’s smiling, “every time someone else dies, part of me does too, you know? It’s worse when I kill them, and I did that a lot. I have a lot of blood on my hands, Steve. I don’t know how much it’ll take to get rid of that.”

Steve brushes the comment away. He doesn’t want to talk about it any more than Bucky does. “My turn. You stole mine, so I’ll have to go with, there’s this thing called the internet that’s basically like a thousand encyclopaedias on a computer. It’s pretty cool. You can look up things and stuff like that.”

“Weird,” Bucky says absently. “I’m in a country where people don’t stare at me all the time. Because of my arm,” he explains. “And also, here in this place, there’s nearly everything that anyone could want.”

“Tony Stark is pretty rich,” Steve agrees. “And I’ve got Natasha, and Sam, and the rest of the team, and you. That’s the best group of people I could imagine having, so that’s pretty great. I wouldn’t want to lose you guys either.”

Bucky nods in agreement, then sits up straight and smirks suddenly, returning to his old good humour, the wicked grin that everyone fell in love with. “My turn. We live in a country where people,” and he leans forwards and kisses Steve quickly, “can do that.”

Steve raises his eyebrows, trying to hide everything, trying to project the farce he’s been training himself to project. “That’s a good point. I think you win the game.”

“I know,” Bucky says smugly. “We have to do this again sometime.”

Steve knows what he means, but he can’t resist adding, “What part?”

Bucky understands, of course, and his grin gets even wickeder as he shifts so that he’s sitting facing Steve. “I don’t wanna forget everything, so I like the talking part, but I think it’s okay if we let that one wait for a little while.”

“If you say so,” Steve says quietly. Bucky kisses him again, more forceful this time, pushing them both back against the edge of the bed. He kisses like he’s desperate, like he’s drowning, like he needs to be reminded why he chose to stay alive.

Steve understands exactly how he feels. He never imagined that he would end up like this, but after all this time, through decades and decades of searching for something he could hold on to, this is the closest he’s found to a home. Maybe it’s Natasha, maybe it’s the rest of the team, maybe it’s Bucky again, but this is finally where he belongs. He’s diving into uncharted waters, and for once he doesn’t have the fear of drowning.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](spacestationtrustfund.tumblr.com).


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